Traffic lights that think. Apps that use drivers’ input. These are some of the ideas that U of T Engineering experts offer for easing Toronto’s traffic problems.

Their ideas are outlined in “The Road Out of Gridlock City,” an article in the March 23 Ontario edition of The Globe and Mail. In the article, Civil Engineering professors Baher Abdulhai, Khandker Nurul Habib and Eric Miller and Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Alberto Leon-Garcia discuss Toronto’s growing transportation woes and outline possible solutions.

“Some congestion is a sign of vibrancy,” says Abdulhai, “but too [much] congestion has many negative consequences … The good news is that there are plenty of approaches to address congestion, traditional and nontraditional, technical and nontechnical.”

For example, Professor Abdulhai’s MARLIN project marries cameras with computers to create traffic lights that can measure vehicle flow, understand what it means, and adapt signal patterns to reduce gridlock. Professor Nurul Habib is investigating ways to manage demand for road space, and Professor Miller is advocating controlling how fast cars merge onto highways. Professor Leon-Garcia suggests making traffic lights smarter by having them adapt to real-time data.

“The Road Out of Gridlock City” is available on the Globe and Mail website (access may be restricted).